u 






THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG 
IN OUR CIVIL WAR. 



BY AN OLD SOLDIER. 



From the Advocate of Peace, September, 1903. 

Looking back upon four years of continuous soldier 
life, recalling its intermingled lights and shadows, its 
triumphs and disasters, inspiring battle scenes and humili- 
ating corpse-strewn fields, beautiful parades and hideous 
prison pens, glorious deaths and heart-breaking funerals, 
large charities and bitter agonies, redeeming heroisms 
and savage horrors, keen delights and immedicable 
wounds, freed slaves and maddened masters, union, 
peace and law restored. with unspeakable losses of treas- 
ure, love and life, — pondering all these, and recurring 
to first principles, one whose immediate ancestors were 
members of the Society of Friends is quite likely to find 
himself reverting more and more to their anti-war tenets, 
and to conclude that in the great conflict both North 
and South were in the wrong. 

ATTITUDE OF NATIONS TOWARD ONE ANOTHER. 

As to the proper attitude in general of one nation 
towards another, Milton's theory would universally be 
recognized as correct: " Ah, sir, a commonwealth ought 
to be but as one huge Christian personage, one might v 
growth and stature of an honest man, as big and com- 
pact in virtue as in body!" For the special business 
of a warrior, perhaps we should accept the rule laid 
down by John the Baptist when soldiers asked him, 
"What shall ice do?" and he answered, "Do violence to 
no man." If that reply be not preposterous, it must 
mean, " You may ward off a blow, but you should never 
unnecessarily strike one." For the behavior of one who 
has been wronged, shall we not respect the view of 
Socrates : " We must not retaliate, nor render evil for 
evil." (Plato's " Crito," 49.) For the Anglo-Saxon's 
disdainful bearing toward what he deems inferior races, 






is not Paul's doctrine at onee a corrective and a sharp 
reproof : " God hath made of one blood all nations of 
men " ? And ought we not to find a perpetual solvent 
and transformer of all hateful elements in the spirit of 
him who enjoined, " Love your enemies," and who, on a 
memorable occasion, when, if ever, violent assault might 
seem justifiable, commanded, " Put up again thy sword 
into his place, for all they that take the sword shall 
perish with the sword " ? 

Lord Bacon strongly commends war. lie says : " No 
body can be healthful without exercise ; . . . and cer- 
tainly to a kingdom or estate a just and honorable war is 
the true exercise." On the 12th of last November, Gen. 
S. M. B. Young, already, as it seems, the highest officer 
in our army, wrote for publication these words : " To 
carry on war, disguise it as we may, is to be cruel ; it is 
to kill and burn, burn and kill, and again kill and burn." 
To the same effect is Gen. Sherman's oft-quoted remark,* 
" War is hell." Can an exercise that is essentially cruel 
and hellish be healthful f 

Except in the German military machine, in that of the 
French and some others, and among half-civilized peo- 
ples, or in the case of a few ' degenerates' and persons of 
arrested mental and moral development, the time has 
gone by when disputes between individuals were settled 
dog-fashion. Personal fighting is now unlawful, and, if 
it result fatally, is severely punished. But if private 
mortal combat is felonious, why is not national dueling 
as much more so as the attempted murder of a hundred 
or a thousand is worse than that of one ? 

WAS AS A MKANS OF SECURING JUSTICE. 

War is often excused as the only means of securing 
justice. But does it not invariably perpetrate more 
injustice than it punishes, prevents, or cures? Does it 
not always let the most guilty go unscathed, while the 
most innocent suffer unspeakably? Is it not commonly a 
mere test of physical strength and satanic skill? Does it 
ever settle permanently a question of right ? With a 
professedly Christian nation should not the truth be re- 
garded as axiomatic that, except to defend its very life 
against deadly violence, a nation has no more warrant in 
the sight of Heaven to lift the sword against a nation than 
a brother has to wield a club against a brother? Was 

•Sherman but echoes John Wesley's "War is the business of Hell. 
How sh&U Christiana help the Prince of Hell, who was 'a murderer from 
the beginning,' by telling the world about the ' usefulness and necessity 
of war ' '.' " 



not Benjamin Franklin nearly right when he declared, 
" There never was a good war or a bad peace "? 

We would not belittle the heroism of one who, at the 
risk of his life and without malice, strikes a blow, not 
for fame, but for his home, his country, and the rights 
of man. We dwell lovingly on the memory of Leonidas, 
of Winkelried, of Sidney, of Hampden, and of Washing- 
ton. In the sharp struggle for existence their work 
seemed absolutely indispensable. Let their glory be un- 
dimmed forever. We say with Thomas Francis Meagher, 
our Irish patriot, when he added to his requested auto- 
graph while awaiting sentence of death, 

"Whether on the scaffold high 
Or in the battle's van, 
The fittest place for man to die 
Is where he dies for man." 

In past ages not only was there generally a plausible 
excuse for bloody belligerency in that there seemed no 
honorable alternative, but there was a superstitious be- 
lief, often a prayer, that the Almighty would miracu- 
lously interpose to give victory to the most devout. 
Even to-day, with a sort of Louis XL piety, some 
nations engaged in unjust warfare keep up that mock- 
ery, as if by copious' blandishments the Lord might be 
coaxed into lending a hand! 

AN IMPARTIAL UMPIRE NOW. 

There was no impartial umpire then. We have one 
now. The Hague Tribunal ought soon to end both the 
bloodshed and the blasphemy. Once recognized as the 
Supreme Court of the world, with either party to any 
international dispute at liberty to appeal to it without 
waiting for the consent of the other; thereupon proceed- 
ing in its discretion to take cognizance and jurisdiction 
of the issue ; after due invitation to all concerned, in- 
vestigating, taking testimony, scrutinizing the facts, 
weighing the arguments, and then pronouncing an ad- 
visory judgment ; surely the hasty resort to human 
slaughter, with its essential savagery and its mocking 
appeals to Moloch, misnamed God, would soon disappear 
among peoples claiming to be above the reptile stage in 
evolution. 

Ex officio, such tribunal, or some stated Congress of 
Nations, might properly formulate definitions and step 
by step elaborate a code. It might well, for instance, 
decide when rebellion becomes revolution, and when, if 



ever, one government has a right to destroy another by 
force. There is at times sore need of such judicial or 
legislative action. 

WAS THE CIVIL WAS UNAVOIDABLE? 

Take an illustration from our own history. 

High authority' has recently declared that in our Civil 
War both Xorth and South were in the right; and we 
are constantly hearing that the struggle was entirely 
unavoidable, that it was glorious to all concerned, and 
that nobody was to blame. Young America's orators 
now seek to conciliate both sides by simply boasting how 
big and how brave we are. Too often the moral element 
is ignored, the vital truth is unrecognized, the mind of 
the masses is befogged", the public conscience is stupefied ; 
as if the greatest civil war in history had no lesson for 
lis or for the world ! It is high time that we open our 
eyes and do some careful thinking. " Against stupidity 
the gods are powerless." 

LINCOLN ON THE EIGHT OF REVOLUTION. 

One whom all now love and honor, by many esteemed 
our wisest and best president since Washington, had 
repeatedly asserted in most emphatic terms the right of 
revolution. On one occasion he sppke as follows: 

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having 
the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the 
existing government, and form a new one that suits 
them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred 
right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate 
the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which 
the whole people of an existing government may 
choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people 
that can, may revolutionize and make their own so 
much of territory as they inhabit." 

These are the words of our truly great and justly 
revered Abraham Lincoln. They express, too, the cen- 
tral doctrine of Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin, and of 
nearly all American statesmen before our Civil War. 
They show how our nation and all the Central and South 
American States sprang into existence as organized 
republics. 

Lincoln's lotion \s president. 

But when Mr. Lincoln became President he looked at 
revolutionary governments from a different standpoint. 
He had sworn to execute the laws ; but a new body politic 
had suddenly arisen and interposed to prevent. It had 
followed exactly the process he had clearly outlined and 



sanctioned. It distinctly based its action on what he 
had affirmed to be " a most valuable, a most sacred right." 
Note the undeniable facts. 

On the twentieth of December, 1860, South Carolina, 
by a unanimous vote of the Convention called by her 
legislature, passed the ordinance of secession. In less 
than two months the six Gulf States followed her exam- 
ple. Within three months and before Lincoln's inaugu- 
ration, the seven seceded States had thrown off the 
United States government, organized a new one, and 
declared themselves an independent nation under the 
title of The Confederate States of America. Within its 
territorial limits all opposition ceased ; unity and en- 
thusiasm prevailed ; the Confederate government was 
equipped, installed, and efficiently at work. No attribute 
of sovereignty was lacking. A nation had been " born 
in a day." The Southerners claimed to be aliens. They 
were terribly in earnest. 

President Lincoln's official oath required him to per- 
form what circumstances now rendered both an impossi- 
bility and an apparent violation of what he had affirmed 
to be " a most valuable, a most sacred right." What to 
do with the new republic was the problem. "All we 
ask," said President Davis, "is to be let alone." But 
the whole North demanded action. What policy shall 
our clear-headed, tender-hearted Lincoln adopt? Con- 
sistently with his favorite doctrine, he may advise to 
recognize the new power, and to enter into diplomatic 
relations with it in the hope of eventually winning it 
back ; or he may undertake to annihilate its government 
by force, conquer its people, and re-annex its territory. 

Conscientiously he chose the latter course. Immedi- 
ately the shooting began, and four other States joined 
the Confederacy. 

WERE THE ELEVEN SECEDED STATES A NATION? 

Mr. Lincoln denied, and most people at the North have 
always denied, that the eleven seceded States constituted 
a nation. But show us a definition that shall not include 
under that appellation the Confederate States. " The 
State," says Professor Bluntschli, "is the politically or- 
ganized people ( Vblkperson) of a particular land." " A 
nation," says President Woolsey (Introd. to Study of 
International Law), " is an organized community within 
a certain territory." Says the Standard Dictionary, " A 
nation is an organized political community considered 






with reference to the persons composing it." Webster's 
International Dictionary defines it as " the body of the 
inhabitants of a country, united under an independent 
government of their own." The Century Dictionary 
makes it " an organized community inhabiting a certain 
extent of territory, within which its sovereignty is exer- 
cised." The oldest, ablest, and most impartial of living 
historians, Professor Goldwin Smith, always a strong 
champion of the North in its conflict with the South, 
explicitly and repeatedly insists* that the Confederacy 
was a bona fide nation, and that the war was "really 
international, not civil." 

WHAT WAS THE DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT? 

What, then, was the duty of the Washington govern- 
ment? 

Guided by its fundamental principles, bearing in mind 
its own origin, recalling its uniform action in similar 
cases, and acting in the spirit of Him who is the "Author 
of Peace and the Lover of Concord," should it not at 
least have recognized the Richmond government, received 
its commissioners, and listened to its overtures? Was 
it not as true then as when our lamented McKinley 
uttered it in 1898, that " forcible annexation is criminal 
aggression " ? Was it any the less so because the Southern 
people had always been our associates, friends, kinsfolk? 
Some nations may seem to have repudiated that doc- 
trine now; but who will say that forty-two years ago 
every honorable expedient should not have been tried, 
every fair and kindly concession have been made, and 
all possible patience exhausted, before recourse was had 
to violence against our brothers? 

Instead of that, we shut our eyes and clenched our 
fists. We denied that they were a nation either de facto 
or de jure. A remark wittier than wise, made by our 
quarter-master Bromley during the war to a Southern 
lady who was eloquently extolling the Confederacy as an 
ideal nation in contrast with the North, expressed the 
persistent nominal attitude of the Union authorities — 
" Permit me to suggest, madam, that the Southern nation 
which you so beautifully describe, is a mere imagina- 
tion!'''' None of us, at the time, openly admitted the 
genuineness of that nationality ; few of us frankly con- 
cede it to-day ; perhaps some of us never will : but from 
the first all the South claimed it; most of them claim it 
to-day ; probably many of them always will. 

*The United States Political History, Macmillan & Co., 1893, pp. 249, 
282, 2X7, etc. 



Because of our reverence for the laws and the Consti- 
tution, all of which we felt that the South had most 
wantonly violated, and of our belief that slavery and 
secession were utterly indefensible, and that therefore 
the South had no right to establish an independent exis- 
tence, we denied the reality of that existence. When 
we found out our error, we were too proud to acknowl- 
edge it and too angry to recede. 

If the principle be true that war, to be justifiable 
must always be strictly defensive, never in the slightest 
degree aggressive; a shield, not a javelin; is it not evident 
that the States which remained loyal, and which still 
constituted the Union, should have restricted their ef- 
forts to warding off violent attacks? Ought we to have 
undertaken to compel the "wayward sisters" at the 
point of the bayonet to come back into the family? Did 
we not take a position untenable in morals when we en- 
tered upon a career of conquest and subjugation ? Grant- 
ing that we were justly indignant or even sublimely 
patriotic at heart, yet when we said to the citizens of the 
new country, "Submit, or die," were we not, in two 
senses of the terra, mad? Should either an individual 
or a nation be quick to avenge a wrong? 

But the Confederates were no better. They thought 
themselves patriots. They believed that their cause was 
just, and they were eager to fight for it. Each saw the 
other's mistake; neither, its own. So minded both 
piously invoked the Prince of Peace, and then the op- 
posing hosts began to kill each other at sight. At the 
moment of secession the United States was right ; ever 
afterwards during the war, quite wrong. The Confed- 
erates were wrong at the outset, and ever afterwards till 
they surrendered at Appomattox. 

A NATION DE FACTO. 

Although it may seem to savor of prolixity, this 
matter is so important that we may be pardoned for 
dwelling on it a little longer. 

We should have recognized the truth that they were 
a nation de facto. They should have recognized the 
truth that they were never a nation de jure. We ought 
not to have attempted military compulsion; they ought 
not to have resisted military compulsion. Each should 
have placed itself at the point of view of the other, and 
charitably giving full credit for sincerity, should have re- 
membered that it is better for a man or a nation to suffer 
wrong than to do wrong. But the command, " Put up thy 



sword again into his place," was unheard for the din of 
battle, the blare of bugles and the beat of drums. Deaf 
and blind, both trusted in God and gunpowder, lead and 
steel, muscle and grit. 

It will be said that having begun to fight it was nec- 
essary to fight strenuously to a finish. It must be con- 
fessed that whether such instinct be human or brutish, 
angelic or devilish, as we are constituted, there is at first 
blush something splendid in such persistence. But upon 
second thought, it is clearly not manly ; still less, godlike. 
It is the rule with bulldogs, gamecocks, gorillas, snakes, 
and beasts generally, including human brutes. But as 
Socrates demonstrates that it is " better to be refuted 
than to continue in error," so nothing is nobler than 
frankly to confess and forsake evil-doing; and there 
never was an hour during the war when it would not 
have been honorable for the North to withdraw its 
armies from Southern soil ; never an hour when it would 
not have been honorable for the South to acknowledge 
that it made a mistake in quitting the Union, a mistake 
in constituting itself a new nation, and a mistake in re- 
fusing to submit to the old authority. Why not acknowl- 
edge the fact? Even feeble-minded duelists, when one 
of them has drawn blood, often declare their " honor " 
satisfied, and they part friends. 

THE POINT OF HONOR. 

Few may be disposed to concede that, as the Federal 
government was magnanimous after conquest, it would 
have been more magnanimous not to have attempted 
conquest at all. But all will allow that it was proper 
and honorable for General Lee and his subordinates to 
yield obedience to our national government at the end 
of the four-years' war. It is difficult to see why it would 
not have been equally so at any prior moment. Nay, it 
would have been vastly more appropriate and more 
honorable to have submitted long before ; for voluntary 
acquiescence in rightful authority is ever more manly 
than extorted compliance ; and countless miseries, shames, 
and horrors would have been averted. Did years of 
battle and butchery in any wise help matters? Did the 
sea of blood wash away the guilt of waging unnecessary 
and futile war? Is the tiger instinct altogether lovely 
when it impels one to battle to the death, even when 
warring against reason, against justice, against God? 

That the North was blameworthy in not stopping 
sooner will be denied by those who superstitiously 



measure merit by material prosperity ; as if success in 
maiming or strangling proved the Lord to be on our 
side ! AVe kept mercilessly closing in upon them with 
vast serpent coils of fire and steel till we triumphed. 
But does the crushing of bones or the choking into in- 
sensibility prove the anaconda more lovely than the tiger ? 

THE LIFE OF THE NATION Won. I) \o| HAVE BEEN 
DESTROYED. 

Let us clear away some of the remaining misappre- 
hensions. 

The question for the South always was, whether they 
should continue to be a nation. The question for the 
North never was whether we should continue to be a 
nation. True, it is often asserted — we have affirmed it 
ourselves — that we were fighting for life, that the ex- 
istence of the JJmon was at stake, that if the South had 
finally prevailed, the nation would have gone all to 
pieces. On the contrary, is it not probable that the 
loyal States would soon have been more compact than 
ever ? Slavery having been substantially eliminated by 
the secession, there would have been no sufficient cause 
for further disintegration. The North would have con- 
tinued a great republic, able to put two million soldiers 
into the field ; states united still, held together, consoli- 
dated by consanguinity, by precious memories, by a com- 
munity of fundamental principles, laws, language, liber- 
ties, hopes, fears, the Christian religion ; by ties of 
friendship, by self-interest; not mainly by force. 

But suppose that a let-alone policy on the part of the 
North would certainly have been followed by a division 
of the old Union into two, three, ten, twenty indepen- 
dent nationalities. Better, far better such resumption of 
State sovereignty, such distribution of governmental 
authority, than the internecine war into which we angrily 
plunged. The dissevered States would soon have coa- 
lesced again, sisters in one family. 

But the Constitution ! what of that? 

We were not battling to save the Constitution. As 
the great commoner, Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the 
House of Representatives, often declared, all through the 
war we were "travelling outside of the Constitution." 
In the presence of " military necessity," for four years 
the Constitution and laws were nowhere. 

SLAVERY WOULD, IN ANY EVENT, HAVE PERISHED. 

Nor were we, as some of us fondly believed, fighting 
to destroy slavery. Lincoln always stoutly denied such 



10 

a purpose. Emancipation was with him an afterthought, 
a last resort, a means, not an end. Whichever side 
should be victorious, slavery was doomed. If the South 
had succeeded, no fugitive thence would ever have been 
restored to his master. Soon the northern border of the 
Confederacy — Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, 
Arkansas — denuded of slaves, would have become free 
soil; and South Carolina and the Gulf States, sensitive 
to public opinion, would not have held out long against 
the unanimous moral sentiment of the civilized world. 
Gradually and peacefully at length and perhaps very 
soon, the cancer would have been extirpated. 

Had it really been intensely desired by our people to 
end slavery, for the existence and growth of which the 
North was as much to blame as the South, we could 
probably have accomplished that result by kindly and 
persistent effort without shedding a drop of blood. A 
sum of money equal to one fifth of the pecuniary loss 
caused by our Civil War would have sufficed to pay 
their masters more than twice the average market value 
of every black man, woman, and child. More than once, 
in 18()'2, Lincoln urged such action, but in vain. 

THE SANGUINARY POLICY OF ATTRITION. 

No ; our end was not the abolition of slavery, but the 
speedy annihilation of the new government. We thought 
we could accomplish it by a few hard blows. Accord- 
ingly we employed not diplomacy, conciliation, moral 
suasion, entreat}', the just, liberal, equitable use of pur- 
chase money; but cavalry, infantry, artillery, ships of 
war, fire, famine, slaughter. And when the destruction 
of Southern commerce, the crippling of Southern indus- 
tries, and the devastation of Southern fields failed to 
break down all resistance, the Washington government 
deliberately adopted the sanguinary policy of " attrition." 
The armies of the Southern nation must be ground to 
powder. The armed men must be killed off. To our 
brothers in gray the alternative presented was submis- 
sion or extermination. At Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864, 
seven thousand Union soldiers and three thousand Con- 
federates were shot down in thirty minutes. " If this is 
a fight of the Kilkenny cats," remarked General Grant, 
"it's a comfort to know that ours has the longest tail ! " 

Had the North stood wholly on the defensive, and 
not attempted to destroy the independence of the South 
by invasion and conquest, all we contended for would 
probably have been attained by peaceful means ; for, as 



11 



their wisest statesman, their Vice-President, Alexander 
H. Stephens, assured us, the seceded States would eventu- 
ally have returned to their allegiance. Had the South 
stood strictly on the defensive, and not pushed its armies 
into Maryland Kentucky and Pennsylvania, its independ- 
ence would at last have been recognized, and would have 
continued until it chose to come back in peace. 

THE NET RESULT OF IT ALL. 

And now, shutting our ears to the eloquent exaggera- 
tions of Memorial Day and the yet reverberating thun- 
ders of a thousand' battles, what has been the net upshot 
oi it all 1 r 

The Union has been re-established — for a while • 
but our victory, like the triumph of Cortes in Mexico 
and 1 izarro in Peru, proving nothing but physical supe- 
riority, did not so touch the consciences of the Southern 
people, did not so fill their hearts with love for their 
conquerors, did not so sanctify in their souls the princi- 
ple ot unity, as to insure against all possible future at- 
tempts at disruption. A distinguished Southern gentle- 
man, our college classmate, a colonel on the staff of 
Jefferson Davis, William Preston Johnston, President 
of lulane University, widely known and everywhere 
honored, intimately acquainted with men and measures 
throughout the South, wrote us eight years a^o — « I 
know of no man in the South who has changed his opin- 
ion as to the rightfulness of our cause during the Civil 
War, unless it was for his advantage to change it " All 
but unanimous as Southern men and women still are in 
the conviction that their cause was just and ours unjust 
what would prevent them from trying the issue again! 
should changed circumstances appear to make it for 
their interest and to guarantee success? 

Slavery is nominally gone, and with it the kindly feel- 
ing between master and servant; but an alarming race 
hatred that did not exist before has sprung up and a 
determination to keep the negro down. As is 'natural 
where human beings are slaughtered like cattle by the 
thousand, our reverence for man as man seems every- 
where to have diminished ; and our foolish conceit of supe- 
riority to black, brown, red and yellow men, and poor 
whites of foreign nationalities, appears to increase. This 
thought gives lise to painful reflections. 

To what shall we attribute the disposition, more ap- 
parent, we trust, than real, to excuse injustice by point- 
ing to business prosperity; to gloss over iniquity by 



LltJKHKT 



013 764 587 7«j^ 

12 / 

alleging subsequent righteousness, to justify, if they 
exist,* lying and treachery, torture and massacre, havoc 
and devastation, imprisonment and starvation of non- 
combatants, by showing that such inflictions were kindly 
meant to " make the enemy want peace and want it 
badly;" to impute our sins to Divine Providence, fondly 
persuading ourselves that "it is the Lord's doing," and 
" we must not shrink from our just responsibilities"? 

C4.TJSE OF THE PRESENT DRIFT INTO MILITARISM. 

If, as many allege, there exists iq some quarters a 
craze for military glory and naval supremacy ; a super- 
stition that degrades our glorious flag into a miserable 
fetish ; an adoption of the God-defying motto, " Our 
country, right or wrong!" an ambition to have our re- 
public, armed to the teeth, strut like a turkey cock 
among the nations and dominate land and sea; a warp- 
ing and twisting, belittling, ignoring, or defying of the 
United States Constitution; or an easy political virtue 
that forsakes the guide of our nation's youth and forgets 
the covenants of our fathers' God, scouting the under- 
lying principles of Liberty and the essence of Christianity, 
to coquette and wanton with imperial despotism — to 
what shall we ascribe all these ominous tendencies more 
than to that tremendous struggle into which we plunged 
with unthinking haste, and which, first and last, in battle 
or by disease or hardships, shortened the lives of a million 
brave men, draped in mourning three million firesides, 
filled with "curses not loud but deep" ten million hearts, 
and thing away twenty thousand million dollars? 

All this ostensibly and in good faith, to save the Union, 
maintain the Constitution, and destroy slavery! We 
meant well. "Bui the pity of it! oh, the pity of it!" 
Could not statesmanship, forbearance, patience and 
charity have found a better way than thai ? 

We had no Hague Tribunal then; but we might have 
heard and heeded the golden words of the great Irish 
liberator, the illustrious O'Connell, echoing the voice of 
the Master- -"No political change is worth a single 
crime, or, above all, the shedding of a single drop of 
human blood!" ElOMEE B. SPBAGI E. 

X i,\\ TON, M LSS. 

• Let us be slow to admit that our Boldlera have been guilty of " marked 
severities." Bat if forced to believe it, let us remember that, as Qeneral 
Bell announced to iiis troops, "the severest measures are the most 

humane!" Joshua's CatnpalgnS of extermination were perhaps the most 

merciful ever warred I They "shortened the war" and seemed perma- 
nent peace I Out President ha* declared— and we wish to believe it — 

"Our soldiers are the most humane in the world." Half a million to a 
million non-combatant-, have perished lo Luzon, and we have slain in 
hat tie fifty thousand of their fighting men ; hut our intentions were ^ood ! 
We must have peace, even if to secure it we have to " make a solitude I" 



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